Bella Poldark

by Winston Graham

  ‘Yes, I kissed Amadora’s mother and Clowance and Morwenna and Amadora herself and Harriet! And – and I should have kissed you twenty times over if I had been able to come near you in the crush.’

  ‘All very well to say that, but—’

  ‘Yes, I say it, I say it. And I have greatly enjoyed the evening, and I hope now we shall get a few hours’ sleep. I am for Truro later today.’

  Demelza sat on the bed. ‘What is she really like?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Judas God, you know who.’

  ‘I fancy her stays are laced – have to be laced – tighter than yours. But well, if we must discuss it at this late hour, she’s – I like her. She’s a challenge. Do not forget that I did not fight with George all night. Was that not an achievement? Was that not what you most wanted? Peace on earth and good will towards men.’

  ‘And good will towards women? I saw him watching you. I think Harriet will come in for a wigging.’

  ‘I feel sure she will be able to hold her own.’

  ‘When you were prancing with her I could not help but recall all the trouble that sprang from your love for his first wife.’

  He sat slowly on the bed beside her. ‘God, yes. But that was deeply deeply serious. This was froth. A mischievous impulse. But who put us together at the dining table in the first place?’

  ‘Amadora, no doubt, who does not know our history.’

  He took her hand. She wriggled to be free and then gave up. He bit each of her fingers gently in turn.

  ‘All very well,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’

  They were silent for a while. She said: ‘That port was not as good as our port.’

  He said: ‘They talk of midsummer madness. Never of Yuletide madness.’

  ‘Have you made an assignation with her?’

  ‘Merciful Christ! I tell you it was froth.’

  ‘The village will be talking.’

  ‘Let ’em. I’m sick of gossip. I’m sick of this village, though I would not move away from it for all the tea in China. Give me a kiss.’

  ‘Not likely.’

  ‘Have you dried up – after thirty-two years?’

  ‘There are better times to suggest it than after you have been fondling all sorts of other women.’

  ‘Fondle be damned! I’m not Hugh Bodrugan.’

  ‘Come to think of it,’ Demelza said, ‘there’s a growing likeness.’

  A brief convulsion of the bed suggested that Ross was either hiccuping or laughing.

  ‘To tell the truth . . .’ he began.

  ‘Oh, that will be a nice change!’

  ‘To tell the truth, it occurred to me tonight that there might be some point in smothering a few old feuds. In fifty years the tide will be coming in and going out just as it does now, the blowhole will spout, the wind and the sun will blow and blaze just the same; but we shall all be gone – or nearly all of us. I suppose, if I’d gritted my teeth, I could have gone up to George and grasped his hand.’

  ‘Instead you poured oil on old embers by grasping his wife.’

  He put his head on her not very sympathetic shoulder.

  ‘I thought Bella was splendid,’ he said.

  ‘So you are converted.’

  ‘That was a brilliant idea at midnight – whose was it, I wonder? – a brilliant idea to play the Floral Dance. At least I danced that with you!’

  ‘You did.’

  Just before twelve the trio playing the music had been reinforced by two extra drummers, and as the clock struck, so they had opened with the Floral Dance. In fact it was ideally suited to the limitations of the dance floor, since a procession could be formed around the enormous table, each man with a partner doing a hop and skip three times, followed by an exhilarating triple twirl. Round they had gone and round they had gone to the thud, beat, thud of the big drums. It had gone on and on, on and on for almost twenty minutes, when the music ended in a final clash, and everyone stood panting and sweating and smiling and laughing at everyone else.

  ‘A great idea,’ said Ross. ‘Geoffrey Charles’s, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bella does not shout now,’ Ross said. ‘I’m totally converted. She doesn’t strain. Her voice is so clear.’

  ‘They were little songs, you know. She specially asked not to sing anything which might seem she was showing off her paces.’

  ‘Maybe I like all voices like that, at half-pitch, men’s as well as women’s. And I loved her dearly for singing that song you first sang in that house when we were first married. Will you sing it for me now?’

  ‘Tomorrow, Ross. Do you think you can get round me so easy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They sleepily undressed.

  He said: ‘What do you think of Lieutenant Lake?’

  ‘A fit companion for Valentine, maybe.’

  ‘That is not a very good recommendation.’

  ‘He made a great fuss of Cuby. I must ask her. He said in Brussels he was Jeremy’s gaming partner.’

  ‘Jeremy left few debts,’ said Ross.

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘I think from something Cuby said the other day she did not quite like David Lake. Perhaps that is the reason. With her brother clinging desperately to his castle and burdened down with racing debts, Cuby does not favour the gaming tables.’

  ‘At least Valentine did not disgrace himself tonight.’

  ‘Except by coming uninvited. I suppose George and Harriet may be staying with him at Trevaunance? It would be the only house in the neighbourhood that had vacant bedrooms.’

  Ross thought over the complications of that suggestion. He did not quite like it. Why did he not like it? Had he not emphasized all through the evening that this was the season of good will?

  When the two young men returned to Place House David went straight to bed, but Valentine climbed to the attics to see if all was well with Butto.

  His story of having ‘bought’ the young ape from a Lascar was not altogether accurate. (He had thrown the man a shilling.) Just off Arwenack Street in Falmouth, near the church, there was a small square flanked by stone-built cottages with a few broken steps at the end leading up to a sail-maker’s yard. Hearing shouts of laughter and shrill screams of annoyance, Valentine had looked in and seen a group of boys aiming stones at a small fat ape, while its presumed owner danced round behind his barrel organ crying for them to stop. The ape was sitting on one of the cottage chimneys, while the owner of the cottage through an attic window was trying to poke the animal off its perch with a broom handle. The man was shouting and swearing at the lads, for some of their stones were hitting the area very near him. The screams were from the ape.

  ‘Here! Stop this! Stop it, I tell you!’ Valentine struck one of the boys across the shoulder with his cane, and there was a pause in the stone throwing while the issue hung in the balance. Some of the lads looked as if they might turn their marksmanship on the intruder. But his rich clothes and air of authority gave them pause. Then David Lake came shambling in, and they took to their heels up another narrow alley between the cottages.

  The organ grinder was silent and so, except for an occasional whimper, was the ape, who, dug violently in the back by the broom handle, shifted his position to a chimney further along the row.

  ‘’E vill kom down,’ the Lascar said, showing a lot of subservient teeth. ‘Me vill get ’im down.’

  He began to dance up and down as excitedly as apparently he expected the ape to do.

  ‘Butto, Butto, ’e is my own animal. I bring ’im from the jungle.’

  ‘Butto,’ said Valentine. ‘Is that his name? I think I rather fancy him. Butto. Butto. Good boy.’

  The animal fixed this new person to use his name with coal-black eyes and seemed to be weighing up the situation.

  ‘Well, then, get him down,’ Valentine said harshly. ‘See if you can. Let’s have a closer look at him.’

  It was Valentine who eventually persuaded the an
imal to come down by offering him a piece of cake, but even then he cowered in a corner, lame and pathetic. He seemed to take a cautious fancy for Valentine, and presently they were in touching distance.

  ‘Look at his feet!’ Valentine exclaimed. ‘This criminal has been trying to turn him into a dancing bear! Kick him into the harbour, David!’

  David made a menacing move towards the Lascar, who dodged away, but stood at the entrance to the alley shouting abuse.

  ‘See,’ said Valentine. ‘These great feet. They’re badly blistered. That’s the way they teach a baby bear to dance. Start the music and then stand him on a bed of hot coals. And look at the stick the fellow has been using – sharp and bloodstained. I have a fancy to take this poor creature, this Butto, home.’

  ‘For Gawd’s sake,’ David said, ‘you’d never get him home. He’s too big. You’re crazed. You’re off your head!’

  ‘Maybe.’ But this opposition was just the thing to make Valentine more determined. He sent David off to buy a laundry basket, and while he waited he fed the ape with two more buns and made soothing noises with his lips to calm him down.

  It was a nightmare of arms and legs and scratches before the squealing, wriggling weight was pushed into the basket and pressed down fighting until the lid was shut and secure. Then it had to be tied firmly to David’s saddle. (Valentine had cunningly argued that David’s horse was the more docile.) They left Falmouth, pursued until they were well out of the town by the Lascar shouting that he had been robbed.

  Once they reached Place House it had been a question of finding somewhere for the beast to live, and Valentine had allotted him the two back attics. But as he entered them on the night of the ball he realized this could only be very temporary because of the smell. No wonder the maids complained.

  He shut the second door behind him and whispered, ‘Butto!’ Two brilliant eyes at once blinked up at him in the candlelight.

  ‘Butto,’ he said again. ‘I’ve brought ee a morsel or two t’eat. Here, my handsome.’ He held out half a watermelon that he had crushed open downstairs, and watched Butto relishing the juicy fruit until saliva ran down his jaws. When the animal was grunting and blowing with satisfaction Valentine opened a cupboard – which had not yet had its doors torn off its hinges by Butto – and took out a bottle of salve. With patience and good temper he persuaded Butto to let him put the salve once again on his blistered feet. This he succeeded in doing, receiving one bite (almost a love bite), but satisfied with the recovery. The soles were already hardening.

  It was perfectly clear now that if Valentine had adopted Butto, Butto had also adopted Valentine. When the healing cream was put away the ape wanted to curl down with Valentine for the night, but Valentine gave him a couple of love taps on his cheek and slid away to return to the human-occupied part of the house on the floor below.

  Chapter Nine

  The elderly Paynters continued to live on in the last cottage of Grambler village. They were now both so decrepit that they were incapable of looking after themselves. Indeed they could not possibly have managed but for the kindness of Music and Katie Thomas, who lived in the cottage next to theirs. The Thomases both worked at Place House, Trevaunance, but slept out, and Katie always found time to brush out their hut, wash their ragged clothes, bring them a stew to put to simmer on their Cornish stove until they were ready to eat it. Music brought in coal and kindling wood and fetched water and shopped for them, this last being usually to bring a pint jar of gin from Sally Chill-Off’s.

  The Paynters accepted their assistance more as a right than as a privilege, grunting and complaining noisily when being so helped. It seemed sometimes that Demelza was more grateful for the help than were the Paynters. She felt a sort of obligation to Jud and Prudie: had they not been servants at Nampara when Ross first brought her home as a starving waif from Redruth fair? If the Thomases had not been to hand the only refuge for the Paynters was the Poor House, and that was hard to contemplate. Demelza might have paid for some woman to go in to live with them and look after them, but even in the poverty of the villages around it was hard to pick on someone to care for such a contentious and dirty couple, especially one who was not as old and dirty herself.

  At Christmas she always bore them a number of presents, and the day after the Trenwith party she conscripted Clowance while she was still at home to go with her on this very difficult and overpoweringly smelly visit of mercy and good will. Clowance felt rather the same instinctive obligation towards the ageing couple, but Bella, being so much younger, had escaped from this sentimental weakness and generously allowed the other two to go on their own. Henry had a snivelly cold, and this was a good enough excuse to leave him behind.

  It was another dark, still, dry day and the land had a brooding quiet about it that was old and comforting: the year was nearing its end and all passions were spent. Even the gulls sounded tired and lonely.

  Because Cuby and Clemency and Noelle were late leaving, it was well on towards evening before the two women set out on their charitable mission. It was already full dark, but the path to Grambler was so well trodden that it did not occur to either of them to bother with a lantern.

  On the way there they talked about the party. Clowance said: ‘Papa was a mite frivolous last night, was he not?’

  ‘A very large mite,’ said Demelza. ‘And it was not because of the drink he took. Spirits seem to have but little effect on him.’

  ‘He made the greatest of a fuss of Lady Harriet. And I do not think it displeased her.’

  ‘Nor should it,’ said Demelza enigmatically.

  ‘On the south coast, Mama, she has become my best friend. As you know, I think – d’you know, I think it all stems from the day when Music and I saved one of her great boar hounds from a mantrap. She was very kind to Stephen too. But she has gone out of her way again and again to help me since he died. She has even tried matchmaking by introducing Philip Prideaux to me.’

  ‘I’m sure Philip is grateful. Are you?’

  ‘Ha! How well you turn the subject! I was going to say that I hope you did not scold Papa too severely for his misdemeanours.’

  ‘Who said they were misdemeanours?’ Demelza asked pleasantly.

  Clowance laughed. ‘Some wives might have thought so. I am glad if you did not.’

  Demelza raised her head and sniffed. ‘D’you think it is going to rain? This bonnet does not like getting wet; it tends to crinkle at the edges like a pie crust.’

  ‘Mama, do you think I could be odious and sneak away from the Paynters after, say, ten minutes? They are almost insufferable. And everything stinks so! Would you very much mind?’

  ‘You were never brought up to the smells of poverty, as I was. What shall you do?’

  ‘It isn’t poverty that smells so bad, it is dirty unwashed things. Well, I thought if you did not mind, I’d call in at Fernmore to say goodbye. I think Paul and Mary are still there; and I hardly had a good chance to talk to Daisy last night.’

  ‘She’s got a horrid cough. Have a care.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Clowance, I do not greatly enjoy seeing your father flirting with some handsome woman, any more than he would take too kindly if I flirted outrageously with some handsome man, as has happened now and then in the past. But we have been together for a very long time, him and me, and except for one dire event on his side, and one dire event on mine – of which you already know much and need have no expectation of hearing more from me now – we have been a veritable Darby and Joan to each other.’

  ‘Who were Darby and Joan?’

  ‘Oh, folk in some old ballad. But mark you, we still feel as much for each other, your father and me, as we have always felt. In our lives, and I’m serious now, we have had so much loving, so very much loving. It has not staled. It varies from year to year, but it keeps always to a constant pitch of – of being deeply and truly involved. And desirous. Against this – if you put this against your father having a frolic on the dance floor with
the beautiful second wife of his oldest enemy – this frolic is as important as a ball of fluff.’

  ‘It’s lovely to know,’ Clowance said, embarrassed now that she had brought up the subject. ‘Of course, I have always known. The whole family knows it. I was – sort of joking.’

  ‘I think,’ said Demelza judiciously, ‘in fact I have come to the knowledge gradual through the years, that your father passes through periods of rebellion, of ambition, of a need for adventure. He is going through such a time now. He would – though he protests he would not – he would dearly like to be entrusted with some mission: like when he went to join the escort of the Queen of Portugal; like being sent to the British Embassy in Paris to report on the Bonaparte feeling in France; like being asked to support or oppose some Bill in Parliament. These moods pass, often they come to naught, but since – since Jeremy died he has been very much at home. Looking after me, he tells folk: but sometimes it’s me who’s looking after him. Last night he was in the best of spirits ever I have seen him in since – since Waterloo. He said to me last night he felt like kicking over a trace. If a simple noisy flirtation releases something bottled up in him, I shall certainly not complain.’

  They were nearly at the Paynters. Clowance squeezed her mother’s arm. ‘You are a wise woman.’

  ‘No,’ said Demelza. ‘Just a woman.’

  The Paynters accepted their Christmas presents with a fair grace. Clowance had helped to carry them and then, having served her ten minutes, excused herself and set off for Fernmore. Demelza gave Prudie a censored account of the great party. Jud was not deaf, except with the inattentive deafness of old age, and while not interested in what his visitor said, he pursued his own line of thought amid the clouds of smoke he created with his clay pipe.

  Eventually, when the parcels were all opened and the vision of last night’s party fairly well explored, he tapped his pipe on the edge of the fire grate and said: ‘Your maid left some soon. Reckon she soon had enough of we.’

  ‘As you saw,’ Demelza said, ‘she was bearing presents for the Kellows, and she wanted to see them tonight before she went home.’